I previously cited that extremely critical evaluation of evolutionary psychology by Jonathan Marks, but what I didn’t realize is that it was one part of a whole series of articles that were mostly favorable reviews of EP. Of course, the pro-EP articles were awful.
One of the worst was by Robert Kurzban — pure vacuous nonsense. It starts off well. He says that it’s not sufficient to simply describe and measure phenomena — science tries to find explanations, deeper causal descriptions of the mechanisms that generate the phenomena you’re measuring.
I can agree entirely with that.
But then he dives into condescension and assertion.
This short essay isn’t the place to get into the details of the explanatory power of the evolutionary approach to (human) behavior. In some sense, I’m happy to say that it’s possible to catalog, count, and codify human behavior, marvel in its wonder, and complacently settle for measuring, rather than understanding.
He’s not going to give us any details on the explanatory power of EP here — we’re just going to have to trust him on that. But isn’t it nice that some people are bean-counters rather than wise understanders like Kurzban?
But I, for one, am not inclined toward such complacency. Neither do I find satisfying explanations that are shallow, if they are explanations at all, such as frequently-repeated one-word proposals such as “learning,” “culture,” or “plasticity.”
Or “evolution.”
The objection to evolutionary psychology is not that it is a high-minded discipline seeking deep explanations for human behavior. It’s that it generally does such a lousy job! (Kind of like Kurzban’s essay.) Just coming up with an explanation is not sufficient — there’s all this evidence-gathering and hypothesis testing that has to be done, and reasonably rigorous experimental design. If you’re just going to squawk “Evolution!” and poop a story out your ass, go to the BAHFest, which is at least entertaining.
You know what else invents just-so stories to explain how we came to be? Religion. They also like to claim that their stories provide explanations for why we are here, and that it’s far more profound than those shallow materialistic scientific explanations.
What I want as deep an explanation for our new data on sexual fantasies as possible and, ever since Darwin, we’ve known where to start to look for one.
That’s his conclusion. To understand it, we need to go back to his opening paragraph.
The other night, I was talking with a group of seven graduate students about sexual fantasies. No, not their sexual fantasies. We were talking about some data about sexual fantasies that I and two of the present students had gathered that showed a very strong and reliable sex difference that, as far as we know, no else had ever found.
Jesus. So many stereotypes of EP geeks on display…but of course they’re studying sex differences. If it weren’t sex, it would be race. And I’m going to guess: it was yet another study of college students, yet another collection of stories they tell each other, and yet again, their fascinations are a product of their ancestor’s survival strategies on the African savannah ten thousand years ago, rather than ubiquitous cultural conditioning.
I’m mystified. What was Emma Peel doing on the African savannah with that tight black leather outfit and the riding crop?
Emma was looking for Soviet spies, of course.
Chasing a gallant steed.
And they wonder why anthropologists don’t kneel down and kiss their rings.
Gathering pink berries, in a sexually suggestive manner.
What was Emma Peel doing on the African savannah with that tight black leather outfit and the riding crop?
Best game of Clue EVER!
Aside from all the Emma Peel jokes (my favorite character, ever), I’m always puzzled by different aspects of “psychology”. Psychology being the more flexible aspects of the biochemical brain, i.e. emotions, attitudes, opinions, etc. These must have evolved over the course of human existence, what we call “crazy” today, is certainly different than we we called “crazy” in the past. And attitudes and “compatibility” surely played a role in who could mate and who went childless; so evolution again plays a part. To extrapolate this into reproductive behaviors actually changing the inherent structure of the brain (and psychology within it) is, interesting but, maybe going too far. The EP advocates need better arguments for their hypotheses. (maybe better hypotheses to begin with).
I found it irritating that he took time to make up a name for one of the students, hung a lampshade on making up the name, then only used the name one more time. He could have just said “one student” and “he”, instead. What is the evo-psych explanation for my irritation, eh?
Or he could have skipped the entire intro. Or all the rest as well.
On a related note, today’s SMBC is on evolutionary psychology, and it’s incredibly stupid. Reads like a Chick Tract.
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=3688
anthrosciguy, ugh. That’s really annoying. I normally like SMBC.
On the other hand, today’s Oglaf is satisfyingly discombobulating.
I also think SMBC’s point is OK — if you’re criticizing EP because someone else told you it was stupid, without reading any of it yourself, you’re doing it wrong.
Well, do you actually have to read any “creation science” to know that it’s stupid? You know from the basic premise it’s mind-grindingly ignorant.
Do you know for a certainty that evolution had no impact on human psychology?
I’ve no quarrel with the questions that EP raises; it is the self-serving hypotheses without credible evidence that twists my knickers.
It’s the Nature vs. Nurture question, but EP tends to ignore the influences of nurture, rendering their conclusions re nature indefensible.
PZ
Waiting for her faithful Steed, of course.
And if a teacher really was doing what Jack Chick has them doing, for instance telling a student he could have them jailed for bringing up creationism, Chick’s point would be make sense too.
Well seeing as human minds are emergent from human brains and human brains are products of evolution, I think it’s pretty safe to say that I know for a certainty that evolution has had an impact on human psychology. Only a creationist would beg to differ. The thing is, evo psych is all about just so stories. There’s no attempt to control for cultural or historical confounds. There’s little to no connection to reliable evidence for what environmental pressures our early human ancestors evolved in response to (e.g. there’s a stereotypical idea about relationships between the sexes or gender segregated behaviours On The Savannah but not much anthropological corroboration).It doesn’t take into account that we’ve *evolved* to be an adaptable, social species with lots of cultural variety even from family to family let alone tribe to tribe or region to region and beyond. It’s always about reinforcing gender, sexual, or racial stereotypes: girls like pink because they’ve evolved to pick ripe berries; men prefer mates with paler skin because they can better spot rashes which might have proven unfitness for reproduction, blah blah blah. Wonder why that is.
Honestly, it reminds me of nothing so much as Answers in Genesis starting out with their “facts” and coming up with all the explanations to fit: vegetarian dinosaurs in the Garden of Eden, super accelerated evolution from a few kinds to the millions of species on the planet in a space of a couple thousand years, the Grand Canyon was carved out by retreating flood waters…
Sorry to disagree, but SMBC’s point is that critics of EP are ignorant of EP. I don’t even think it would be too much of a stretch to read this as a criticism of anthropologists who still work with a notion of culture that doesn’t include a highly selected genetically determined human nature, with a highly modular mind and strong ongoing sexual selection.
Click the little red button under the SMBC’s comic. He’s clearly critical of EP as well (and has been critical of it for quite some time now).
I seem to remember Zach Weiner mocking EP in the past. I doubt he’s a whole hearted supporter.
There’s also the alt-text , so quite a troll-y comic. Given how willing EP’ers are to fuck themselves with their own mouths, it does not take much reading of their ‘work’ to know its largely horseshit nominally better than creationism. There probably are a few decently designed and implemented EP studies with reasonably restrained conclusions, but they are tiny specks lost in the ocean of ‘just so’ shit.
I’ve tried to maintain an open mind on EvoPsych. Pinker’s Language Instinct, make of it what you will, does make sense to me.
I come at the problem of EvoPsych from AI and cognition. Why is always the dumb question, if it’s asked first – especially if it comes with an all-encompassing trick bag labelled “Evolution” in tow. How is always the better question. Once How is answered, Why usually comes into focus with blazing clarity. That’s where EvoPsych falls down, intellectually.
May I say how much I’ve enjoyed reading this chunk of prose from a while back. It encapsulates all my complaints with EvoPsych, especially this bit
I’ve worked with neuroscientists, mostly as a software Quasimodo. I lay no claim to expertise in the field. But I had a discussion with my then-boss, who was an expert. He said of neuroscience, something to this effect. We’re currently like passengers in an aircraft, over a city at night. We can see the lights of the city, the headlights moving on the roadways. We can make some educated guesses about what those lights imply. But as we descend, more of the nervous system is coming into focus. Instead of one moving light on the roadway, we can now detect two headlights. We might even infer a truck or a car from those lights. But we still can’t begin to fathom the reasons why that vehicle is moving: where it came from, where it’s going. The science is in its infancy. Jumping to conclusions, especially coining phrases like Savannah Mind, that’s just silliness.
@Ibis3
I think it’s needs harsher push-back than “No, obviously we believe that evolution shapes the human mind”, because they are really, really fond of pulling out that strawman about their critics not believing in evolution applied to the mind when criticized (Steve Pinker did it twice in an indirect argument with PZ Myers a long while back, IIRC).
We need to actively challenge their understanding of evolution, asking whether they understand and believe in modern evolution. “Do you understand how drift can dominate in a slow-breeding, low population group of hominid apes? Do you understand that not every feature was positively selected form – some of them appeared out of cumulative mutations and didn’t have a negative enough impact on reproduction for them to be selected out negative selection-style?”
@brett Yeah, the whole “not demonstrating a clear understanding of biology in general or evolution more specifically” thing is yet another reason to dismiss Evo Psych rather completely. I’m just not going to hang around holding my breath waiting for them to come up with something worth consideration. They can stand in the queue with the bigfoot guys and the gluten-is-an-evil-conspiracy pushers. It has all the hallmarks of pseudoscience and that’s how I treat it.
Evolutionary psychology is social darwinism because it regards emotions as fact instead of opinion. Cosmides and Tooby the founders of evopsych asserted that emotions are like software programs running on the brain hardware.
The creationist conception that people have a soul and spirit is actually the only scientific way to go about doing psychology, because to avoid social darwinism requires to accept that subjectivity is valid, so you can then draw a line between fact and opinion. The soul or spirit chooses, and whether or not the soul exists is a matter of choice.
So science about psychology will generally always combine facts about how people choose, with subjective “reasonable judgement” about what spirit people choose with. “Reasonable judgement” should be understood as a hodgepodge collection of opinions that change according to popularity.
There is actually also a correct evolutionist understanding of human psychology. An evolution article describes how choosing leads to surprise in attack and unpredictability in escape in predator prey relationships. Choosing is then more advantageous then calculating an optimal behaviour, and a sophisticated capability for choosing is selected for. For example a hare fleeing from a fox has the options hop, skip, run, stand still, hide, attack. If the hare chooses to stand still we might make the opinion that the spirit which decided this is “courage”, or “recklessness”. The hare that has no free will capability always does the same thing roboticly depending on the inputs, and is eaten by the fox because of the predictability.
Can someone do some high throughput sequencing and do the same surveys EP guys do? We’ll combine it with GWAS and really pin the fantasies on specific alleles. Which nucleotide substitution causes fantasizes about big asses or authority figures? Let’s do some serious science and figure this out! Then we’ll measure the selective pressures and evolutionary history of that allele and we’ll truly understand our psychology! It all so simple and basic! Why are we wasting time on all this development and neurology stuff?! The answers are directly encoded in our DNA!
Yes, I’m being very sarcastic.
Wow. That’s some next level bullshit. Keep that up and you’re going to end up like the Time Cube guy.
….the concept of subjectivity does not function without the acceptance of subjective things….duh…………….
Inane and stupid word salad HAHAAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA.
The soul doesn’t exist, no physical evidence for it, and anybody claiming it exists is a delusional fool. Look in the mirror delusional fool. We don’t care to share your fuckwitted delusions.
….ofcourse there would be no evidence for subjective things, because evidence would make it objective….. duh………..
The subjective subject of the subjective does not subject’s subject until the subject subjects a subject.
Subject.
Oh, sorry. I left off the most important and convincing part of my argument.
DUH!
Who you are as being the owner of your decisions is categorically a subjective issue, which means the answer can only be arrived at by choosing it. You are an asshole, a moron, a retard, as being the owner of your decisions.
Heh. Ever notice how people who draw parallels to technology never understand the technology they’re using as a metaphor? For a long time, the brain was compared to a telephone switch. Then it was a computer. No it’s not. The brain is nothing like a computer – well, one part is curiously like a computer, the cerebellum, but that’s of no consequence to this discussion. It doesn’t run software. And don’t get me start on memes – Dawkins did a fine job setting up the concept and every silly person in the world ran off with that word and started making ignorant noises about it. Dawkins should have copyrighted the word, just to shut down all the dumb things said about memes.
Even the idea of “the brain” is flawed. There’s no neat dividing line between the brain and the spinal cord. Pain doesn’t travel all the way up the spinal cord to be processed in the brain. There’s the afferent and efferent nervous systems, too. And now we’re learning about the electrochemical parts of the brain, the glial cells. Used to just think they were so many styrofoam peanuts in there, Turns out they’re as crucial to an understanding of the brain as the neurons themselves.
There are no metaphors to describe the brain. It’s the human brain. It has lots in common with other species with these great big frontal lobes glommed onto the front, making our foreheads bulge out.
You are what you describe for thinking we are interested in the ravings of a delusion fool speaking in word salad. Bwahahahahahhaha. You are being laughed at.
1+1=2 the concept of subjectivity requires acceptance of subjective things. I have no doubt about it that it is right moron.
Things are objects, no? But that’s almost as stupid as your argument.
Nobody chooses whether or not something is in fact a thing which exists, or whether it’s a subject or an object. It just is (or isn’t), then I do or don’t find out about it, and it can be categorized somehow, like being alive/dead/inanimate, made of fairy dust, a thing which has subjective experiences, and so on. If we chose a category and we were in fact wrong, then our choice would not change that fact.
I didn’t choose to have experiences or to have anything like a perspective. I started existing when I was conceived or born, and only after I existed and was a physical object did I start having experiences. Not before, presumably because you’re talking a lot of nonsense that requires no explanation. That’s my subjective recollection of how my life has played out so far, and this is corroborated by mountains of evidence of similar stories for everyone else.
But see how it works for yourself some time: try out being a subject that isn’t made of matter moving around in spacetime, has no perceptions of any other physical things happening, has no intentions or purposes about any physical things they’d like to happen, memories of physical things which happened before, no internet of other people to troll your pointless bullshit, and so forth. You get none of that except what you claim is “subjectivity.” What do you think that is? What is left?
……you are saying it is a fact forced by evidence that you are loving person, while my opinion that you are just another evolutionist scumbag asshole who doesn’t acknowledge people’s emotions is wrong because it is arrived at by choosing it.
Yawn, irrelevant word salad, meaning nothing but what you want it so mean. You must want it to mean bullshit.
Sooo… the word salad is pretty strong with the one, but what I’m getting out of it is that if we want something enough, and therefore ‘choose’ for it to happen or exist… it will happen or exist. So if I want it, I can actually create an immortal soul and that is the soul of a dragon, because that’s how I want it to be.
… So basically, we’re GODS! YES!
This is not my area of expertise, but it has always seemed to me that EP gets cause and effect backward. It’s true that certain behaviors do enhance the likelihood of living long enough to pass along your genes. But that doesn’t mean those behaviors are hard-wired; it means that people who don’t behave that way simply don’t reproduce as successfully, so there are fewer of them, which gives the illusion that the behavior must have been hard wired.
And, since we really don’t know what the world would look like if everyone acted differently — say, if there were no interest in amassing wealth and power because everyone preferred cooperation to competition — it’s all just guesswork.
Well, you know,* evidence like that is always provisional, but I would like to think the evidence strongly suggests that I’ve been a loving person so far and will probably continue to be. Strongly but not too forcefully. Because that would be a weird fucking thing to say.**
I don’t acknowledge an emotion is wrong because it was chosen? How and when and where am I doing that? What are you talking about?
Did you assume that I don’t believe people make wrong choices? Because I’m a determinist or something like that? Is that what this means? I certainly do think people can make bad choices and are responsible for them. Evolution is barely even on my radar most of the time, so you can drop that crap.
But will you even try to imagine what I suggested? You’re claiming there’s some subjective essence, which is nonphysical and supernatural, aren’t you? I don’t believe you understand what that would mean if it were true, nor do I think it is true. If it is, neither one of us gets to choose that fact, since at this point we clearly would make contradictory choices. Do you have more super choosing powers than me or more than anyone else, with which to make reality? No. So you must be talking pure nonsense.
*You almost certainly have no clue.
*That is, what you said is a weird fucking thing to say.
Like every evolutionist i have ever talked to in 10+ years you confuse choosing with sorting out the best result, the facts about what is good and evil acting as sorting criteria. You misuse the logic of natural selection sorting out the fittest, as your logic for choosing. Selection is a force principle, that in principle an allele will sweep to fixation, it does not provide for freedom. The concept of choosing only works by the agency of a decision being regarded as a categorically subjective issue, hence people reach the concusion love, hate, the soul, and the spirit exist by choosing the conclusion.
That is basic civilization, otherwise you are Sheldon telling people as fact what they feel, creating a master race, and not understanding irony.
@Mohammad Nur Syamsu
Question: do you or do you not understand the concept of “word salad”?
Another question: has it sunk in yet that when you talk, no one here can tell what you are saying because it looks like word salad?
consciousness razor
” I don’t believe you understand what that would mean if it were true, nor do I think it is true. If it is, neither one of us gets to choose that fact, since at this point we clearly would make contradictory choices.”
The choosing about what it is that makes a decision turn out the way it does, does not result in a fact, it results in an opinion. And it functions perfectly fine that one makes the opinion a person is hateful, and changes the opinion to loving, and then hateful again.
Well, as a phrase to be used in an evolutionarily-informed psychology (which presently-existing “Evolutionary Psychology” certainly does not appear to be, much), sure it’s silly.
But as a porn name, it’s not bad at all!
Mohammad Nur Syamsu: you’ve been nothing but abusive, and incoherent as well. If you continue in this vein, you will be banned…and if you use “retard” as an insult again you will be banned instantly.
The only reason you’re being tolerated now is because people are engaging with you.
I am familiar with the phenomenon that evolutionists understand absolutely nothing about choosing, emotions, opinions. That it is all just noise to them, and they desperately want to get back to their comfort area of just only facts.
You confuse choosing with being a delusional fool due to your own inability to explain. Like we are interested in your sophist drivel. We aren’t. You are one confused idjit. Lights on, nobody home.
Citation mother fucking needed, otherwise word salad drivel…
Meh. This latest word salad is decidedly lacking in flavor. Needs more flavor.
Nazism, communism, atheism and evolution theory are all properly categorized as ideologies which reject freedom is real, and assert what is good and evil as fact.
Do you know for a certainty that evolution had no impact on human psychology?
Okay, what’s the name for this dishonest rhetorical technique again?
Yawn, more word salad, meaning nothing but your own prejudices, ignorance, arrogance, and stupidity. Boring. You can’t choose to be richest man on Earth and have it become so just by your choosing. Choosing is meaningless, if you choose stupidly, ignorantly, and delusionally. Which you have done.
I am the only civilized person here who acknowledges people’s emotions. The rest of you are just scumbag evolution assholes.
Mohammad Nur Syamsu
Ah yes, clearly there is no overlap between other authoritarian ideologies, such as Islam, and others which “reject freedom”. See, Islam is different. Why is it different? Well because the oppressors are choosing to oppress you thanks to the subjectively determined freedom of choice! It all makes perfect sense.
Mohammad Nur Syamsu
I think you’re overdue for a ‘FUCK OFF.’ Here’s a ‘FUCK OFF’ with interest. FUCK THE FUCK OFF.
You all accept freedom of opinion, you just require that all conclusions are forced by evidence.
Pesky evidence. Determining reality by fiat and shit. When will it learn?
When will you learn irony Sheldon?
You have no cogent opinion without evidence. And you have no evidence. You have nothing but drivel upon word salad.
When will you learn your ideas are bullshit, and stop inflicting them upon rational people?
When will you establish the reality of how ignoring evidence leads to freedom of choice and a soul? You have a ‘just-so’ statement that cannot be evaluated factually and declare yourself the victor. Huzzah and bully for you.
Mohammad Nur Syamsu@58
Oh you were being ironic were you? How stupid of everyone not to notice. After all, your vast years of commenting history here should’ve given everyone a convenient baseline against which to measure your current comments. It’s clearly our fault we didn’t immediately see that the only thing we have to judge your position on was at odds with your actual position. Fucking arsehole
Is this a bot? It sounds like a bot.
The only defence I am willing to give EP is (1) in principle it could be a fertile field of study, and (2) there might be some papers in EP that are good papers but didn’t get much attention. But that’s it. I have read several EP papers and they have all been terrible — and not just a little flawed or limited, but plain outright garbage that appears to have been written for the sole purpose of supporting conservative social agendas. I’d really like it if someone could point me to some decent EP papers.
Some people are really really afraid of determinism.
Mohammad Nur Syamsu
I do, within limits. Just talking for myself here.
How do you want to make a reasonable conclusion without evidence? And why do you mix that up with opinion in the same sentence?
I conclude that I do not owe taxes to the government because none of them existed in the savannah and that’s it? I am good to go tax free?
Mohammad Nur Syamsu, 53
-I am well aware that many people feel that Obamacare is the worst thing since the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, the Holodomor, Stalin’s purges, the Cambodian genocide, and/or the Great Leap Forward/Great Chinese Famine/assorted purges, despite the mountain of evidence that the ACA has: 1) helped millions of people get/keep health insurance with preventative care to help keep them healthy and out of bankruptcy, 2) has not tanked the economy (plenty of evidence it has helped and will continue helping), 3) has not led to new granny killing death-panels (already existed when private health insurers denied coverage to ‘wind down the clock’), and 4) the Rethuglican and Teabagger alternative is to let those millions of people who now have affordable health insurance bankrupt their families and die in the street.
-I am well aware that many people feel that racism is ‘not a problem’ in the US because we have a person of color for a President, despite the mountain of bodies and ample evidence of discriminatory policing and policies negatively affecting people of color at every stage of life.
-I am well aware that many people feel the War on Drugs, the War on Terror, the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the CIA torture program, and the CIA drone assassination program are all great and wonderful things, despite the overwhelming evidence that they are all complete disasters with terrible human costs that have only made things worse.
-I am well aware that I can continue listing horrible actions that humans feel were perfectly good, despite all evidence of those actions inflicting great harm and suffering on many people to satiate greed and hurt feelings.
I try to put quite a bit of effort into making myself aware of how people feel and how my actions affect them, but I am also very much aware that feelings alone are worthless as a means of understanding reality and making decisions. You must consider the evidence first, and then you can let your empathy help guide you to make good and decent decisions based on that evidence.
@anthrosciguy SMBC released a similar comic in 2011: http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2354/ It’s explicitly about feminism.
@Mohammad Nur Syamsu
I recommend that you take a deep breath and then try restating your basic position from scratch. I recommend this because clearly nobody can tell what the hell you’re even saying.
Stop, rewind and try again.
Well anthropologists are completely entitled to do so, since it has not been demonstrated that there is “a highly selected genetically determined human nature, with a highly modular mind and strong ongoing sexual selection”. The range of individual and cultural variation evident to casual observation*, and the human ability to learn entirely novel skills (tell me, who was reading, writing or playing video games in the “Environment of Evolutionary Adaptation”?) tell strongly against such claims.
*You do know, presumably, that if a trait shows a lot of variation, that is evidence it has not been subject to strong directional selection.
LykeX@68,
I suspect Mohammad Nur Syamsu has no more idea what he is saying than anyone else. He doesn’t like us, or anyone who accepts the reality of evolution, that much is clear. He has some warped idea that accpeting evolution means denying the reality of emotions and choices. Beyond that, I doubt there’s any coherent content at all.
Yes, it’s amusing – if rather sad – to see how many people (like MNS here) cling desperately to the strawman assertion that simply recognising the reality of evolution must somehow mean believing that people are automata. It’s something a lot of our visiting religionists have in common, really, no matter which flavour of religion they prefer – merely not believing in the supernatural must must must somehow mean believing that people are automata! It is to laugh … but it’s sad, too, to see people crowing loudly to prove how not-even-wrong they are :-\
Mohammad Nur Syamsu, please note: realising that there is no such thing as gods, goblins, ghosts etc. does not entail thinking that people are automata. Thank you.
Mohammad Nur Syamsu (aka Nando Ronteltap) was a long-term resident of talk.origins and was no more coherent. there. He’s occasionally angry and annoying but is probably best (ignored).
If the hare chooses to stand still we might make the opinion that the spirit which decided this is “courage”, or “recklessness”. The hare that has no free will capability always does the same thing roboticly depending on the inputs, and is eaten by the fox because of the predictability.
If adaptive behaviour is proof of a soul having free will, robots have had souls for years, and these souls were created by Darwinian evolution. See, by way of example, http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1000292
In any case, you’ll have to come up with a better argument than “free will”. How do you know it exists? Could you tell if you didn’t have free will yourself?
As for Dawkins copyrighting “meme”, what happened to “meme” is a perfect example of a meme. Replicators replicate in order to replicate, and you can’t predict what they’ll do to survive.
dexitroboper@72:
Seriously? I had just about convinced myself that this was a Markov chain talking, either a particularly good one or one with a human selecting the “best” sentences to paste in.
Oh, that’s Nando Ronteltap? Never mind. Total waste of time. Banned.
Ah. I see.
Nothing proves free will so much, then, as shouting, “Free Will!” every time one encounters a person who believes that there is some evidence for evolution?
The extent of God’s gift to you to choose your behavior freely regardless of input is aptly demonstrated here. Well done.
Why does this lazy strawman have to get dragged out every time the practice of Evo-Phrenology comes up?
REJECTING (AND MOCKING) A POORLY REASONED, POORLY SUPPORTED CLAIM (OR BODY OF CLAIMS) DOES NOT IMPLY BLANKET REJECTION OF EVERY SINGLE PREMISE APPLIED TO THAT CLAIM
How is it possible to not understand this?!
Well, at the basic level it’s a strawman, but it’s a peculiar species that operates on a kind of circular logic, as follows:
1. If an argument’s conclusion follows from its premises, then if that argument’s premises are true, its conclusion must be true.
2. If my opponent asserts that my argument’s conclusion is false, AND my argument’s conclusions follow from its premises, then my opponent must be asserting that my argument’s premises are false.
3. …what do you mean I have to actually ESTABLISH that my argument’s conclusions follow from its premises?! LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU!
Then, either:
4a. If my opponent is arguing that one of my premises is incorrect, my opponent must be arguing that all of my premises are incorrect. Don’t ask me to explain this, it will only give you a headache. OR
4b. I am so unreflective and shallow, or just plain stupid, that I have utterly failed to recognize that the argument whose specific conclusion is being rejected has premises other than “the human brain was subject to evolution” and therefore if my opponent rejects my specific conclusion this is the only premise they can be disputing. Don’t ask me to explain this, it will only give you a headache.
5. Therefore, my opponent must be claiming that the human brain was NOT subject to evolution.
6. This is absurd.
7a. Therefore my opponent has failed to think things through, is wearing ideological blinders, or is merely stupid.
7b. No. It is physically impossible that *I* am the one who has failed to think anything through or been ideologically blinded.
Our frontal lobes are fairly big, but by no means the biggest either absolutely or proportionally.
And our foreheads consist mostly of air (the frontal sinuses).
I don’t understand your point. Do you seriously believe natural selection has anything to do with choosing? Its name is just a metaphor…
“Sì, abbiamo un’anima, ma è fatta di tutti piccoli roboti.”
That’s delightful to read. :-)
NCSE just pointed an interesting article about Richard Lewontin’s thoughts on adaptationist explanations: https://evolution-institute.org/article/the-spandrels-of-san-marco-revisited-an-interview-with-richard-c-lewontin/
Are there any EP theories that have panned out with good research?
Even if this was a 100% accurate assessment, the problem is that evo-psych doesn’t look at the program as some separate thing, running on the hardware. No, they argue, instead, ***constantly*** that these “programs” or more like the gears in a bloody mechanical watch. Sure, its a program, but its a “program” that is hardwired into the bloody hardware. They, on one hand, all but claim that the “mind” is like loading a computer with Windows, Linux, or the Apple OS, and that you can end up with a brain that is the equivalent of loading games, or art, or business software onto the OS itself, etc. But, then, the moment they start babbling about how the fracking software does what it does, or got there in the first place, they **insist** that its all just “there” somehow, like its burned directly into the hardware, and our whole entire species has a copy of Photoshop, GTA *and* quickbooks stored some place in it, and we are merely “picking” which one pops to the surface (instead of, say… actually, via learning, bloody installing only the stuff we value).
You can’t have it both ways. And, even if you could, the, “Its all already burned into the hardware, just waiting to be used!”, is ***not*** the version that describes how the brain does anything, once you get from, “Its possible to run this software on it.”, to, “This is the software that nearly everyone happens to have actually installed.”
So, yeah, what the other person said – if you plan to make stupid analogies, at least understand what the heck you are making the comparison to, and whether or not doing so makes you look like a complete twit.
PZ, if you are against evo-psych it’s probably because you’ve read the worst of the literature. I urge you to read David Buss’s books and the books by Amy Alkon because these are best evo-psych books around yet,
Also, to PZ and his readers, I recommend you read this blog: http://goetzlab.blogspot.ca/ and
Uh, an advice columnist and one guy wiki says is “known for his evolutionary psychology research on human sex differences in mate selection.” I don’t think PZ knowing about them (if he didn’t already) would change much.
ahilan, show us with evidence that the “adaptations” can be linked to certain genes, or you have nothing but just so stories.
http://www.advicegoddess.com/mall/index.html the david buss book listed here is particularly excellent and debunkes a lot of feminist myhts
also I recommend reading Amy Alkon’s blog here http://www.advicegoddess.com/goddessblog.html
Debunks nothing. Why bother reading anything you link to? You have an agenda. You don’t like women who think for themselves. You are too stupid to do the thinking for them though.
How can you say that when you haven’t even seen the evidence that backs every claim of mine, and exonerates evo-psych from this vile slander?
What feminist myths does Buss debunk?
What slander are you talking about?
If you’re not just spamming links to advice columnists, then say something we can have a conversation about.
Is there any relevant research in the actual psych or bio literature we could look at, not in a pop-sci book or a self-help book? If so, how about you tell us what that is?
Why bother? Everybody else has failed to make EP anything other than a laughing stock. What is so special about your “evidence” Cricket? Finally have the link to the gene causing the “adaptation”? Nothing short of that is sufficient. And you know that.
David Buss is a professor emeritus and his book is not pop-sci
It’s not a journal article, it’s not a textbook, it’s not a collection of poetry, and it’s not a lot of other things. But by all appearances, “The Evolution of Desire” is a popular science book. Being a professor or scientist is utterly irrelevant, since even legitimate academics doing lots of great work in their fields write such books (and perhaps he is one such person). Hopefully, actual research is cited in them, to back up their claims. That’s what I was asking for, among other things.
It would be much easier if you would briefly formulate, in your words, what we’re supposedly wrong about, what are these feminist myths, etc. But if you have nothing, I’ll just check out now, thanks.
Citations to the academic literature needed to support EP, and any refutation of feminism. Which is well supported by the same literature, which is why you need to find better evidence than the feminists.
Also, as Amy points out here, the adaptations for many human traits have actually been proven https://twitter.com/amyalkon/status/587421302836879360
Citations to the scientific literature, not twitter, needed. If you think we are accepting your drivel you are sadly mistaken. You will have to provide good, solid evidence for every claim, and it won’t involve somebody trying to give us a snow job.
Either science up, or shut the fuck up.
https://evolution-institute.org/article/on-common-criticisms-of-evolutionary-psychology/?source=tvol
Much evidence is listed in the above article
Are you sure? Instead of a review/opinion article, try the primary literature. Put up or shut the fuck up loser. You lost with such a ploy.
And ahilan, be sure the gene that causes the adaptation is identified with solid evidence in any paper you cite. Otherwise, one can’t tell if the “adaptation” is genetic, which is the idea behind EP, or cultural, which those here believe. Cultural adaptations can be changed by changing the culture.
I’m barely “here”, so I have no right or reason to think that you have any intention of speaking for what I believe (as contrasted with what you, or any reasonable person, may think that I should believe). Nonetheless I am moved to rephrase your admonition to ahilan so as to better fit what I actually do believe (and what I would suggest you, or any reasonable person, should believe, if I were rude and not afraid of the possible consequences…). This is a rough first draft: “(A) If no gene that causes the adaptation is identified with solid evidence, then I cannot justify calling the ‘adaptation’ genetic, which is the idea behind EP. (B) If there is solid evidence that the ‘adaptation’ is caused by cultural factors, then I can justify calling the ‘adaptation’ cultural, which is an idea that most EP theorists seem to be very intent on keeping anyone from having lest it encourage them to try to change the culture in ways that most EP theorists seem not to favor. (C) If there is no solid evidence either way, then—while waiting for some to appear—I might want to consider that (1) perhaps the ‘adaptation’ is no adaptation at all, but merely a genetic and/or cultural spandrel, or (2) perhaps the ‘adaptation’ doesn’t even exist!”
Definitely not short and snappy. And possibly too ‘balanced’, in that it suggests (falsely) that I don’t think that the default assumption, given belief that some “adaptation” does exist, should be that it’s cultural.
P.S. Even though it is as devoid of gene-level evidence as anything else in the collection edited by Cosmides and Tooby, I retain great fondness for Shepard’s chapter suggesting how the 3-dimensionality of human color space might have evolved. It may be a Just-So Story like all the rest, but at least he suggests one line of biological experimentation (that I don’t think has ever been taken up; but I really haven’t tried to find out) that could tend to support or disconfirm part of the story: determining whether pigeons have a six-dimensional color space.
Scientifically, if you claim it is genetic, you should show minimal evidence for it. Typical EP shows none, and attempts none. Without that evidence, given the large plastic human brain, the prolonged learning period, culture becomes not the back seat, but the front seat (null hypothesis).